


children of the revolution

by dickviolin



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Anal Sex, Angst, Cold War, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Period-Typical Homophobia, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 13:24:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22884667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dickviolin/pseuds/dickviolin
Summary: blanket disclaimer for works containing sascha zverev. see notes for more details“You never told me your name,” Sascha says.“Very rude of me.” The stranger takes a long sip of his drink, his eyes not leaving Sascha’s.Sascha and Stef meet under a cursed star.
Relationships: Andrey Rublev/Alexander Zverev (past) (mentioned), Stefanos Tsitsipas/Alexander Zverev
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	children of the revolution

**Author's Note:**

> hi,
> 
> as you are probably aware if you pay attention to tennis, olya sharapova, sascha's ex-girlfriend, has made credible accusations of domestic violence against him (including screenshots and multiple witnesses backing up her testimony). if you are likely to be triggered by things like that, i would not recommend reading her instagram posts/interviews with her; the details she has given are graphic, shocking and utterly sickening. 
> 
> i'm not going to take any of my fics containing sascha down. i don't want to pretend that i didn't support him for eighteen months before all this came out. i don't want to pretend that we weren't all duped. i want these works to exist as a record of the dangers of thinking you know anything about someone in the public eye. if we write fiction about people, we're actually just writing about characters loosely based on what people allow us to know about themselves. 
> 
> however, i don't feel comfortable writing any more fic about sascha. i don't want to receive kudos for this- please don't leave them- and i will delete comments if and when they are left. please respect that, and please don't read this fic. 
> 
> believe women. exercise caution. be good to yourselves and others. we are all fighting invisible battles. 
> 
> ~dickviolin

“Same again, sir?”

The barman looks as tired as everyone else. Sascha nods. Barely perceptible. The barman turns round and shuffles over to the back wall to retrieve a bottle.

“Not that one,” Sascha calls. “That’s the Jefferson’s Select. I had the Saloma Buffalo before.”

“Sorry, sir,” the barman replies in a voice that suggests he isn’t sorry at all.

“You know your whisky.” The voice is of someone who has sat down next to him at the bar. Sascha can hear the stool squeak as his interlocuter settles in.

“I’m more into wine,” Sascha replies. He doesn’t look round, eyes fixed on the barman to make sure he puts in a single ice cube, not two. “But they don’t have anything here you’d give a dog.”

“Giving a dog wine,” the voice muses. “Now there’s something I’d like to see.”

The drink safely delivered to him, Sascha finally looks round. And promptly almost falls off his stool.

“Fuck,” he mutters and rights himself. He’s normally more smooth than that, in everything. But there’s a vision before him, haloed by the grainy yellow light of the bar. Curly hair in waves of blond and brown, and dark, tempting eyes. The sleeves of his cotton shirt are rolled up to the elbow and Sascha can see, among the dark thatch of hair on his forearm, a small tattoo, something in Cyrillic script. Sascha can feel his head turning upside down.

“Are you all right there?” the stranger says, in vague amusement, and Sascha blushes beetroot.

“Fine,” he mutters. “Um.”

“Wine,” the stranger says.

“What?”

“We were talking about wine. Giving it to dogs.” The stranger flashes a brighter smile and Sascha almost does something dumb and teenage like giggling nervously.

“Yeah. Wine. That’s my thing.” He takes a sip of the whisky to steady himself and finds it isn’t nearly as nice the second time.

“Your thing?” the stranger enquires.

“I sell it. I’m a wine merchant.”

“Is that why you’re in Manhattan?” The stranger runs a fingertip round the rim of his glass. _Oh,_ Sascha thinks, _so that’s where this is going_. The chase is on. He rolls his shoulders and sits up straight. This is his territory.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m selling a case of Beaujolais to a guy on the Upper East Side. And there’s a vineyard in Vermont I’ve been meaning to visit for a while.”

“Nice for some.”

“What about you? You don’t sound local.”

The stranger smiles ruefully. “I’m here out of necessity. Land of the free, et cetera.” He raises his glass.

“Gin or vodka?” Sascha asks.

“Vodka,” the stranger replies, and Sascha notes the pronunciation, unmistakeably Russian, unlike almost everything else about him. “Wait there,” he says, and crosses the room to the jukebox. Sascha watches him feed a couple of coins in, press the buttons, and the machine creaks into life.

“Césaria Evora,” Sascha marvels as the stranger returns to his seat.

“One of my favourites.”

The music is wonderful- and brings to Sascha’s mind more than a few ex-boyfriends- but he’s impatient.

“What’s your name?” he says.

“Yours first,” the stranger says.

Sascha’s eyebrows knit over the top of his glass as he takes a sip. “Sascha.”

“Sounds Russian. You don’t.” The stranger quirks his eyebrows in return. Sascha is _gone_.

“My parents are.”

“And you?”

“German.”

“_A ty po russki govorish_?”

“Yes,” Sascha replies, almost defensively, in Russian. “But we shouldn’t. Not here.”

“Why not?”

_Because_, Sascha wants to say, _the barman is already looking at us funny, two men clearly flirting with each other, and if he thinks we’re Soviets we’ll be lucky if he just kicks us out_. But he doesn’t want the man opposite him to stop talking. Not now he’s got addicted to the sound of his voice.

“You never told me your name,” Sascha says.

“Very rude of me.” The stranger takes a long sip of his drink, his eyes not leaving Sascha’s. “My mother’s Russian, in case you were wondering.”

“And your father?”

“Greek.”

“Like you,” Sascha guesses, taking him in again, olive-skinned, dark-eyed, a slow, syrupy accent, definitely Mediterranean.

“Mhmm.”

“And you never explained why you’re here.”

“In this bar? Because I was thirsty.”

“In Manhattan.” The games, for now, are still amusing.

“How much do you know about Greece?”

Sascha shrugs. “It’s where Aristotle’s from.”

The stranger chuckles. From his back pocket he pulls a crumpled pack of cigarettes, the red stripe of Marlboro peeking out over his slender fingers.

“Do you smoke?” He offers the pack to Sascha.

“No.”

“You don’t mind if I-”

Sascha extends a hand to say, _carry on_. He wonders if he should say _the last man I loved smoked Woodbines, I’m just glad you have taste_, but then he’ll just get stuck thinking about Andrey, about Moscow, about the customs officer and the gun. He was starting to enjoy himself. Why ruin it now?

The stranger dangles a cigarette between his lips and fiddles with his lighter. He mutters something under his breath in, Sascha presumes, Greek, when he can’t get it to light.

“Can I?” Sascha reaches over. The stranger acquiesces. He flicks it with his thumb, _one-two-three_, and the flame sparks. He watches the tip of the cigarette turn to red ash.

“Thank you,” the stranger says. It’s a long time since someone’s said _thank you_ to Sascha with such sincerity.

Sascha is aware of how close their faces, their lips still are. He pulls back. Just a little.

“You were talking about Greece, I think,” he says.

“Yeah,” Stef says. He blows a billowing breath of smoke over his shoulder. “I was a teacher in Athens, at the university. Things have been getting worse and worse since the military…” he takes another long drag. “So we went on strike, me and my colleagues, all of us, even the business school. Taught our students outside in the courtyards. And then.” He shrugs. Looks away. Sascha is hooked. “Well, the wrong people heard me saying the wrong things. Greece isn’t exactly safe any more. So. I’m here. There are schools here, in the UK, in France, where I can teach. I’ll survive.”

“But you can’t go home,” Sascha says.

“No,” the stranger says, almost a whisper.

“How long…”

“A year. My sister turned sixteen this week.”

“Oh,” Sascha murmurs. Then, “My brother’s in the east. He’s a doctor. I can call him but-”

“I’m sorry,” the stranger says. “It hurts. Like an ache, right? Like something’s missing.”

Sascha doesn’t say anything. Just nods.

“Stefanos,” says the stranger. “My name’s Stefanos.”

“I like it,” Sascha says, eventually. “Stef-an-os.”

“Do you want to get out of here, Sascha?” Stefanos asks, and all of a sudden, the bar’s darkness and smoke is cloying, Sascha’s too warm.

“Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go.”

Out in the street, they stand several inches apart, hands buried in their coat pockets. America is America, but there are still limits, even in New York, even in the middle of the night.

“Do you enjoy it? Selling wine, I mean.” Stefanos’ breath clouds on the cold air.

Sascha squints ahead to the line of streetlight glow. “No,” he says, because there’s no point pretending, not any more, not to Stefanos. “I hate it. But it means I can travel. And travelling vendors can sometimes get into the east more easily. So I’ll do it if it means I can see my family again. Even if I just saw them across the street, or out of the window of a restaurant, even if I couldn’t talk to them or touch them. Just to know they’re still real. I’m not just imagining them.”

A brief hand between his shoulderblades, then Stefanos pulls back; a taxi screeches past them and the sound makes them jump.

“This is me,” Stefanos says. They have turned down a side street and are now standing at the foot of a flight of stairs up to a brownstone.

“It’s a nice place,” Sascha says.

“I have a friend,” Stefanos replies. Sascha doesn’t pry. He doesn’t think he wants to.

“He’s not home,” he says. “Your friend?”

Stefanos shakes his head. “Would you like to come in?” It feels formal. Much more than it ever was with- well, with any of them. With Andrey, with Dominic, with Roger’s friend Stan. Stefanos is different, though. Sascha can tell.

He nods. Stefanos leads them up.

The house is chilly but Sascha rather suspects Stefanos’ friend’s generosity doesn’t extend to heating. He hangs up his coat on the peg next to Stefanos’ and a thought, stupid, too optimistic, of the future, of shoes and coats lined up next to each other every morning and every evening, pops into his head.

“Would you like another drink?” Stefanos says into the stale silence.

“Not really,” Sascha says. His patience is running out, now. Stefanos is tall and muscular and it makes Sascha’s breath catch in his throat. There is a heat growing, already, in the pit of his stomach.

“Good,” Stefanos says, “Me neither.” He crosses the gap that separates them. Takes Sascha’s face in his hands- huge, warm, safe- and kisses him. It is a question answered in the best possible way.

They go to the bedroom. Stef presses him against the door, and then they almost tumble onto the bed in their haste. It’s fast and hard and urgent. It’s Sascha working himself into Stef, their bodies flush against each other, hands pinned above their heads on the wall over the headboard. Stef is long and thick and he has a trail of dark hair running down his chest and his stomach and Sascha stops them halfway through to turn them round and worship his body with his mouth. Plants kisses up and down his torso. Sucks him for a moment with his hands holding Stef’s thighs apart. But Stef stills him with a hand on his cheek and says _not yet, don’t want to come yet, _so he turns back and drives into Stef again and they fuck and fuck and _fuck_. There is only the sound of skin hitting skin and Stef crying out, cursing in Greek, and the rush of blood past Sascha’s ears. Stef is tight and this feels good, so good, every side of his cock enveloped.

He comes before he has time to expect it, a sudden rush of pleasure in the very depths of him, and he grabs hold of Stef’s hips as he shoots deep inside him. He rests his sweat-filmed forehead on Stef’s shoulder and jerks him off with the last of his energy. He feels Stef clench around him as he comes and sees the dark sheets stained damp with it. He pulls out and kisses that broad plane of back, the nape of his neck, where the curls meet the dusty skin. Spent, but not empty. Stef is still pressed up against the wall. His hands are splayed out, but they fall as he gulps in great pants to catch his breath. Sascha wraps his arms round him to catch him and feels each one of his ribs and wants to say _who’s looking after you_, but he doesn’t, because now isn’t the time.

They fall asleep in a sweaty heap. As his eyes itch closed Sascha pulls a loose strand of Stef’s hair away from where it is plastered to his forehead. _I could look after you_, he thinks idly.

(_He could. He could spend the night and then the next night and they could spend every night together. They could build a life. He could take a good look at Stefanos’ tattoo and see what it says. He could find out his siblings’ names, the name of the town where he grew up. How he likes his eggs in the morning, what kind of record shops he can spend hours in. What time he wakes up if he doesn’t set an alarm. They could spend afternoons in loving silence basking in summer warmth through high windows. _Honey, I’m home. _He could._)

It is a stupid thought. He can’t. Stef wants to go back to Greece and Sascha wants to go back to Germany and neither of those things are possible. And they can’t stay together, not in America, not back in Europe, not really. They can’t ever be anything other than perverts (_Pidar,_ faggot, _schwuchtel_, Andrey, the checkpoint, the crack of a gunshot-).

_I could look after you_, he thinks, hopelessly. _I couldn’t look after him, but I could look after you_.

Stef is so peaceful in his sleep. Eyes just shut, eyelashes shadows down his cheeks. There is no pain where he is. Sascha thinks he will stay the night, not sneak out like he normally does. He can hold him while the moon is high in the sky, and then when morning comes-


End file.
